Monthly Archives: March 2013

The day started earlier than most Sundays; I actually set the alarm for the regular Tuesday/Thursday-morning ride time of 6:55am, even though I wasn’t planning on getting out until 8:30 or so. Why? Got to catch the end of the Tour of Flanders! Which would have been more interesting if it didn’t take 20 minutes to finally find a working live feed for the video, causing me to miss the part where Fabian Cancallara ditches Sagan on the last climb and then solos in the final 12k for the win. Fortunately, it’s available on youtube here.

Cheap $1 tire repairJust east of San GregorioShortly after 8:30 Kevin and I head slowly, and I mean really slowly, out to the coast. He was not a happy camper, and didn’t get feeling better until he got mad enough about the pain that he totally ditched me on the Stage Road climb from San Gregorio to Tunitas. What a way to wreck a beautiful morning! And it really was beautiful, with the broken clouds and super-clean air. I thought he’d stop at the top, but no, he was continuing on, making time on me while I had to change out the battery in my video camera before continuing to Tunitas.

I pushed pretty hard on the lower, flatter part of Tunitas, knowing that was a place I could make up quite a bit of time on him, and eventually caught up just as the main climb started… and right as I found my rear tire going flat. Darn, two flats in a few weeks, this is killing my typical 3,000 miles between flats average! It’s also costing me a lot of money; $5 for the bill I had to reinforce the front tire with last week, but thankfully I had a $1 bill this time.

We did climb Tunitas fairly fast after that, and of course I lost contact with him until it started flattening out again. If he ever learns how to push on the flatter parts, I’m in real trouble! But since I was never any good at that when I was his age, I might have a bit of time.

Kevin looking serious, studying things the way you hope a pilot would.

I was so hoping to wake up to dry roads this morning, but guess it wasn’t meant to be. Not raining, but damp. Thankfully not so bad that I couldn’t rationalize riding my Madone instead of my rain bike. Don’t get me wrong; if it’s really dumping out there, it can be fun riding the rain bike. That whole man-against-nature thing. Bring it on. But a light drizzle with damp roads is simpy yucky. It destroys your confidence descending and you can’t see through your fogged-up glasses. But a really nice bike makes up for a lot of it.

Just three of us today; myself, Pilot Kevin and Karen. Kevin (my son) couldn’t make it due to another really bad night with his kidney stone pain, Karen said Karl would rather stay inside when it’s wet, and the rest of the group probably think they were just being sensible. What they missed was one of those rare rides at a sensible pace, so sensible that even I could find the lungs to carry on short conversations while climbing Kings.

Wonder what the Strava “suffer” score might have been? I forgot to wear my heart monitor so I’ll never know, but I suspect it was pretty low. That’s OK. It felt nice not running myself into the ground for a change. –Mike–